But now we found ourselves backed into a corner. After a few failed attempts at a new single, and shaken up quite a bit by the personnel changes, we realized that if we didn’t find a killer hit—and soon—we would be just another three-hit wonder. I, for one, wasn’t ready for a day job. Thus began the now familiar task of hunting for a single. This entailed listening to literally hundreds of acetates: demos sent by publishing companies to record labels and artists in the hopes that these songs would be made into hit records.
The process took days. After a while, your ears sort of burn out and you’re not sure whether you can even make a good judgment call anymore. We were about at that phase of the listening process when we placed the phonograph needle on a rather worn-out looking hunk of vinyl sent from New York. On the demo, you can hear the composers trying their best to convey the emotion of their little song: one guy strumming an acoustic guitar while the other sings in a bizarre falsetto while pounding on his legs to get a semblance of rhythm going. The voices were abysmal; the record itself was scratchy and sticky and, we later learned, had been passed over by everyone on both coasts, from the Grass Roots to the Vogues.
And we loved it.
Despite the sound of the record, we knew we had to have it. We got White Whale to contact the publishers who, coincidentally, were the producers of the Lovin’ Spoonful, and they flew the Manhattan-based writers out to L.A. for a meeting with us at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where they were ensconced in a $2,500-per-night bungalow. Oh, man, I couldn’t wait for this!
Garry Bonner retrieved his guitar from the bedroom and Alan Gordon began to slap his knees in time to the strumming. They sounded even worse than the demo. But it didn’t matter. We wanted this song, and they and their publishers certainly wanted us to have it.
The publishers were Charles Koppelman and Don Rubin and, indeed, they had been responsible for recording some of the greatest music of the past few years, in our band’s humble opinion. Good-Time Music. We were finally closing in on the source. We just knew that Erik Jacobsen, who had produced the ’Spoons for Koppelman-Rubin, would be assigned to us too and that we were about to laugh our way back to the top of the charts. But instead, after forcing Lee and Ted into what must have been an uncomfortable meeting with Bones Howe, we were handed over to a relative newcomer, one Joe Wissert.
Who?
Joe, it seems, had been the child genius engineer responsible, at the unbelievable age of fifteen, for engineering some of the biggest hits to come out of Cameo-Parkway Records in Philadelphia. These included hits by the Orlons, Bobby Rydell, and Dee Dee Sharp. We remained nervous, but Charlie and Don assured us that we were golden.
Still, we weren’t quite ready yet to make another record. We weren’t even really a band anymore. Not yet. We enlisted the help of Chip Douglas, a bass player and vocalist we had known for years as part of the L.A. club scene.
We spent the next eight months on the road perfecting our new song, “Happy Together.” Chip arranged the background vocals and even wrote out the horn parts, and he played bass too. It’s difficult to assess whose contribution to the production was more important, although that very heated conversation continues to this day between Joe and Chip. I believe that the record is a total synchronicity of its parts and players and wouldn’t have happened if the wrong butterfly hadn’t have flapped its wings somewhere.
Everything about recording “Happy Together” was just a little bit different for us. For the first time, we weren’t at our familiar and beloved Western Studios. We were now at Sunset Sound, with a lot more wood and glass than our old stomping grounds. And not only was Bones gone, so was Chuck Britz. The legendary Bruce Botnick was the engineer at the helm, helping out the new kid on the block, Joe.
The actual recording went very quickly. In fact, my lead vocal was done in one take with Lee and Ted grinning at me through the glass partition. I tossed in the line “How is the weather?” from Alan Gordon’s original throwaway demo and everyone laughed. I knew that I’d have a few more chances to sing the song without a joke ending. But no, they all loved it and it became part of rock history. I was just being a jerk.
Still, by the time we had put on the background voices and Botnick cranked the track, powered by Johny’s fantastic and tasty drumming, we all heard the magic. Add Chip’s orchestra and Wissert’s airy mix and, voilà! A sound that has never been duplicated.
The record is justly included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, although for political reasons, the Turtles, as a band, will probably never be. But that’s a different book for another time.
“Happy Together” remains the only time I’ve left a recording session knowing that I had just made a number one record. It was not only the Turtles’ biggest hit record, it changed just about everything for us!
It still defines me.
SEVEN
Beat the Beatles
Here’s a tip for those times when you’re a little down and out: Have a number one record! It really does wonders for one’s self-esteem. Talk about your sea change. Had it not been for the women who were already beginning to complicate my thoughts, these would have been the smoothest seas I had ever sailed. But first, I had to tell Nita about my love in the city.
It had been your cliché slow-motion, soft-focus Elvira Madigan kind of daydream. Sitting down with Nita and her mother in their Culver City apartment, I was only peripherally aware of their double heartbreak. Look at me: I had never had anyone outside of my immediate family who gave a shit about me one way or the other, and here I was, kissing off the most beautiful chick I had ever seen because I had fallen in love with the idea of being in love. I was a rat. Truly. It was a selfish and pompous act on my part and the beginning of a very long list of life errors. It also wasn’t the last time that I would be such an asshole to the girls in my world. I guess I had a lot of living to do.
So, as “Happy Together” began its meteoric rise to the top of the charts, Melita and I pursued our long-distance love affair. And, of course, I was also getting laid every time I turned around. We all were. Karmically screwed forever.
Our song was everywhere in a big hurry. I heard it every half-hour on every radio station in L.A. By the time it hit the Top 20, Bill Utley’s phone was ringing off the hook.
And the inquiries were growing classier. We got the first clue about our emerging status with a booking on the very prestigious Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Having grown up a folkie, I knew the brothers’ comedy shtick by heart. Mark and I had sung “Marching to Pretoria” and performed the rest of their act in his father’s den on our drunken overnights. And these guys had the ear of the underground. Tommy Smothers was John Lennon’s friend. Getting this show was a huge deal. All these years later, it still is. Tommy loves to smoke weed. He did then too. And he’s a brilliant guy who, like the rest of us, desires a little credit for thinking outside the box. So we thought that it was fantastic that Tommy took us under his wing and introduced us to the national television audience as his good friends and recent discovery.
We had the best time ever doing a TV show at CBS’s Television City in Fairfax, next to the farmers’ market and across the street from the Farmer’s Daughter Hotel—hourly rates available. I sang live over the actual backing track from the studio sessions.
Everyone else could relax and lip-sync their parts, but I was realizing now that I would have to stay alert and be in great voice if I was going to be singing live from now on. Just a few weeks later, the brothers brought us back again, this time to proudly announce that their discoveries had the biggest record in America. We had a lot more confidence this time around.
♦ ♦ ♦
I moved into a tiny little jewel box of a house on Kirkland Avenue, back in Laurel Canyon. I didn’t need that low-self-esteem Hollywood Boulevard flophouse anymore. I was done punishing myself. For now. Everything was better. The Midwest ballroom gigs were being replaced by actual concerts in beautiful theaters. We were invited to perform at the Expo 67 world’s fa
ir in Montreal. It was amazing. We played at the Alaska centennial ceremonies in Anchorage. We did The Tonight Show, got the nod and the wink from Johnny, and got asked to play Jerry Lewis’s telethon by Ed McMahon himself. Not to be outdone, The Joey Bishop Show, with a young Regis Philbin, phoned. We were often flown to remote locations in tiny private planes and met at the airport by waiting limousines. This was the life I had always imagined that rock stars lived. Now it was my turn. When The Ed Sullivan Show called, we were only one degree of separation from our heroes, the Beatles.
The following week, “Happy Together” knocked “Penny Lane” out of the number one slot in America. It stayed there for three weeks in late March and early April of ’67.
The Ed Sullivan Show was the pinnacle of success in show business, not just for rock acts, but for all acts, from Judy Garland to the Harmonicats to those plate spinners and ventriloquists. Everyone watched, every Sunday night at 8 P.M. on CBS. And I mean everyone. I always had. My parents had watched Ed as far back as I could remember. I was still living at home when we had all watched the Beatles together. Now my parents would get to see their own son, in living color, on the giant TV he had bought for them.
CBS put us up at the Plaza Hotel, which would have been spectacular had it not been for the construction going on below our room on Central Park South. I met Melita there and my nerves were already frazzled going into the week of rehearsals for Sunday night. The jackhammers were an unnecessary addition to the mix. I couldn’t sleep and I was losing my voice. CBS called a doctor for me, who prescribed a sleeping aid to ensure that I would relax enough to regain some vocal strength before the live performance. It was a lethal-looking maroon-colored gelcap containing 500 milligrams of a substance called Placidyl. Welcome, my friend—you and I are about to spend quite a few fun-filled years together.
Mr. Sullivan, famous for his confusion on-air as well as for his malapropian introductions, brought us out on live television with the words, “Ladies and gentlemen, and they’re all from California!”
The program went very well indeed. You can still view it online or on DVD. The Smothers stuff too. It’s all still out there. You can’t outrun your past. My voice kicked in, the band looked great, and when the song was ending and the cameras cut to Ed, Mark and I boldly walked up to the man himself to present him with an oversize prop flower. He accepted it, but he sure wasn’t expecting it. Flower Power, man! The Turtles were the new poster boys for the movement of peace and love as the most important summer in musical history began. Ed must have liked us, because we returned a couple of times to play our new releases. It got much easier and a lot less stressful.
♦ ♦ ♦
I had made it! Life was good. I drove a Mercedes 280SL and wore velvet and lace onstage. I had a fuzzy top hat I had appropriated from Western Costume and a sweet walking stick I carried as an even more outrageous affectation. “Happy Together” was now a number one record around the world. My parents loved me and Melita was talking marriage.
Meanwhile, Chip Douglas had been talking to his pals Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones. He quit the Turtles, despite having a number one record, to produce the Monkees. Their first record together was “Daydream Believer,” so the partnership obviously worked. It was now up to us to find his replacement. And we knew just the guy: our L.A. friend and former lead singer and bassist for the Leaves, Jim Pons. He slipped seamlessly into our band and our hearts and would remain there though many subsequent incarnations. It’s Jim you see in the aforementioned video clips; Chip had no desire to be a part of any democracy.
All the while, a strange fever was sweeping through our little bubble. It was called marriage. First, Al had gotten hitched to his post–high school sweetheart, Diane, and they had a child instantly. He was already quite the family man by 1967. Then Mark married his high school girlfriend, Pat. Jim Pons invited us all to Oregon to witness his vows to one Nan Gary. Don Murray married Kathy and although Tucker was unaffected, I was also swept up in the madness.
Melita and I were planning a June wedding, even though I had not yet turned twenty. She picked out this pretty little Rudi Gernreich number and, with her long honey-colored hair flowing in the wind, she was all the inspiration that I needed to return home from what was to be our first European tour.
We returned to Sunset Sound with Joe Wissert at the helm and Bruce Botnick at the controls. There was never any question about what our next recording would be. Even though we had discovered quite a few wonderful songs in our demo listening, we were now a Koppelman-Rubin act. They had chosen wisely for the Lovin’ Spoonful and we could only assume that they knew more than we did. They picked another song by Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon: a zippy little number with vaudeville razzmatazz called “She’d Rather Be with Me,” and, cute as it was, none of us were under the delusion that there was magic here.
But White Whale wanted it, we had a big tour ahead, and we were in no position to start arguing abstracts like magic. So, in late May, with “She’d Rather” climbing the charts both here and abroad, and having dethroned the Beatles on our home turf, we finished playing a late concert in upstate New York and met Bill Utley at JFK Airport for a cheesy nonstop Air India flight to London.
EIGHT
We Rule This World!
No One Can Touch Us!
The flight was amazing. The smells were exotic and foreign and so were the passengers. We sat in the rear of the old 707 in what was, back in the day, the smoking section. They served us little green curried snacks that were indescribable and inedible. And, I swear, although I might have imagined this part, there were people traveling with live chickens in cages jammed into those tiny overhead luggage bins. Everyone had turbans and no one spoke the Queen’s English at all.
Why, we couldn’t help but wonder, did our record company stick us on this weird and depressing airline when we were, obviously, the next big thing? Seems that it was impossible to get paid for Indian sales, but if you took your payment in trade—like airplane tickets—that was no problem. They all did it; it wasn’t just White Whale. Besides, we weren’t on White Whale Records in the UK.
Our first records, “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “Let Me Be,” had been released by Pye Records, a British indie label that had the Kinks, among other luminaries. We were just thrilled to have our songs released globally; we’d never expected hits. When “You Baby” was released, it was on Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate Records, with much more prestige attached. Oldham loved us—still does—but it didn’t help propel our good-time song into the Brit charts. When “Happy Together” came out and began its meteoric rise up the American charts, Decca Records in the UK called Lee and Ted and promised them an international hit if they’d sign an independent distribution contract. Decca was massive, as was their subsidiary London Records, which released American artists. We were finally on a major label.
“Happy Together” was already a huge record in England as we crossed the Atlantic on our stinky chariot. Tucker got plastered on the flight over, alternately yelling about how we were bigger than the Beatles and passing out in his coach seat. Utley, of course, flew first class. We read all the British music magazines on that flight: Sounds, Disc & Music Echo, NME (New Musical Express), and Melody Maker. This Yank called Jimi Hendrix was on the cover of a recent Melody Maker with a big article about how he was single-handedly changing the rock scene forever, but we didn’t know who he was or what the big deal was about him.
What really caught our attention, however, was a column called Blind Date, in which a celebrity was played a bunch of random new releases and reviewed them without knowing who the artists were. This week’s guest artist was the singer Lulu, of “To Sir with Love” fame. And one of her reviews was of our follow-up single, “She’d Rather Be with Me.” She recognized our voices instantly, which I guess was a good thing. And then she proceeded to attack. “Oh, these are the Americans who did ‘Happy Together,’ right? Um … too bad. I had expected so much more from them. Oh, well.” And that was
that. Dismissed. We were momentarily depressed but then realized that it was only Lulu talking here and that probably no one cared. Fortunately we were correct. “She’d Rather” became a much bigger hit in Europe than “Happy Together” had been—go figure. And maybe her review, in some small way, had helped.
We landed at Heathrow sometime after 8 P.M. and took taxis to our assigned hotel, the Stratford Court, a stuffy businessman’s rest on Oxford Street. Definitely not a rock hotel. We were still wearing the clothes we had worn on the flight over. The message light on my telephone was blinking when I first entered my tiny room. Calling the front desk to retrieve my message, I learned that I had received a call from Graham Nash of the Hollies. I called Graham instantly and he happily invited the entire band over to his flat to hang out and have a smoke. No one even changed his shirt—we quickly hopped into a cab and embarked upon our first international adventure.
♦ ♦ ♦
Nash had a beautiful apartment with Oriental rugs and hanging art. Sitar music was softly playing and, to complete the surreal picture, there was Donovan, the “Mellow Yellow” man himself, dressed in Indian garb and sitting cross-legged on one of the aforementioned carpets, smoking hash from a hookah. Just hanging out, the way we had imagined things would be if we ever made it to England. It was all “Hello, lads” and “Welcome!” and we settled down to enjoy some London hospitality. After an hour or so, when we were all sufficiently baked, Graham asked us if we wanted to hear something brand-new. We were all psyched, thinking that we would be among the first to hear the new Hollies album, and voiced our approval and anticipation.
Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. Page 8